Presently, mobile communication services based on mobile telephones, which are widespread throughout the world, include UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service), PDC (Personal Digital Cellular), GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and the like. The current situation for GSM, which is the newest among the foregoing, is such that new mobile telephone terminals are released every several months, each time of which new input devices, connection interfaces, and applications are installed thereon.
Specific examples of such new functions include a high resolution digital camera as an input device; an infrared communication, a USB, an external memory as a connection interface; and a television telephone, streaming, and an IP messenger as an application.
Thus, there is a situation in which gaps exist between the functions installed on communication terminals owned by users depending of the time when they were purchased.
In such situation, when, for example, an attempt is establish a TV telephone connection from a mobile hone that has a TV telephone function to a mobile telephone that does not have a TV telephone function, a determination is made whether the connection counterpart support a Television function, by referring to the subscriber information that is obtained by searching the subscriber identifier “IMSI” of the connection counterpart by means of an HLR (Home Location Register), which is a subscriber database on a carrier network. As a result, since the function is not supported, the HLR will notify the connection origin that the connection counterpart is not compatible with the TV telephone function.
Current mobile telephones can utilize an infrared communication, an USB, and so on for connection with other peripheral terminals. On the other hand, technologies for implementing short distance wireless connection on a personal computer and the like include WLAN, Bluetooth, Zig Bee, and others.
Currently, standardization organizations are studying a network which starts with the utilization of IP technology for mobile network infrastructures and which will accommodate stationary networks as well, as an ALL-IP Network. Further, an architecture called a PAN (Personal Area Network) is proposed in which a network is formed of a mobile telephone having a subscriber identifier to identify mobile subscriber on a mobile network, and a plurality of terminals linked by a short distance connection.
Patent document 1 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-187053) discloses a technique to make services available by acquiring appropriate resources from a network when there is a discrepancy in function such as a coding scheme between terminals of video/voice communication service users.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-187053.
Between communication terminals such as mobile telephones owned by users, there is a gap occurs in the applications installed on mobile phones that depends on the time when the phones were purchased. In order to use new functions, the user has no choice but to purchase a new communication terminal that is compatible with these functions which leads to the problem that the user needs to make frequent purchases, which places a heavy financial burden on him/her.
The technique disclosed by Patent document 1 has a problem in that although it can to complement an existing function, it is not intended to add a new function and thus is unable to keep up with new applications.